


coming home, and the stops we took along the way

by xviichapters



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28286382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xviichapters/pseuds/xviichapters
Summary: Seungcheol is the oldest of 13 soulmates, the only one born with a complete soul. He has felt the tearing of his soul the most times from a young age, a part of it leaving every time another soulmate is born. He spends his life searching for each of them to be complete again, feeling the invisible strings pulling him in twelve different directions. This is his journey to bring them home.***[Coup de Couer Round 1]
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan/Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Chwe Hansol | Vernon, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Hong Jisoo | Joshua, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Jeon Wonwoo, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Kim Mingyu, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Lee Chan | Dino, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Lee Seokmin | DK, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Wen Jun Hui | Jun, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	coming home, and the stops we took along the way

**Author's Note:**

> This is an OT13 soulmate AU. Order of appearance of the members will follow the relationships tagged. So for example, Seungcheol/Jeonghan is tagged first, so Jeonghan will appear in the next chapter. The first few chapters have been planned and half-written but it's really up in the air for the rest of the members, so there isn't a fixed schedule for updates. I'll finish it, eventually. Let's just hope it doesn't take two years again lol.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy the story!

They call it “the Rip”.

When a soul detaches from its main body to fill the heart of a newborn somewhere far away, it tears clean but leaves behind both a physical and intangible scar on that of the first child. Most parents hope and pray that their child would be born last in a pair of soulmates, so that they may never feel that unforgettable, indescribable pain. Often it comes early in a child’s life, when they’re not yet two-digits of age, not yet aware of the harshness of the world. For most, it would be the first real taste of its malice.

While those born second-half don’t experience the pain of the Rip, they instead carry with them a yawning hunger for the full soul they never got to experience. They will go on searching to fill that emptiness and remedy the pain their departure must have caused on their first-half.

And then there are those like Seungcheol; the first in a long chain of soulmates.

He experiences his first Rip a mere two months after his birth.

He cries for days and days, still a stranger to the world and yet already experiencing its cruellest pain. His parents, while distraught, were also relieved. Even if it hurts now, babies seldom remember pain – fragile yet resilient as they are – and it almost guaranteed that Seungcheol would not have to go through it again when he is older and can remember it better.

Their relief was short-lived.

In December that same year, four-month-old Seungcheol experiences his second Rip. Two soulmates. Uncommon, but not unheard of. They would all be the same age then; maybe even go to the same school. It would be alright. Seungcheol cried for another week and chills ran through his little body but he would be fine after.

It would be a few months before his parents were again, proven wrong.

In that first year of his life, Seungcheol experiences a total of five Rips. He was sickly and constantly wracked with fevers, face red and lungs wailing because his tiny body was unable to properly recover from each bout of a bit of his soul, breaking away from him. His parents wept not just for him, but all those after him who must be feeling the same pain as pieces of themselves break into even smaller pieces.

Every month came with it the fear of another Rip, another heart-breaking scar marring their little son’s smooth back.

It ends, finally, when Seungcheol is four years old. That February, with their hearts clenching in their throats, Seungcheol’s parents wonder if there was even any space left along their son’s spine to fit another long gash. It is only much, much later that they realize the time of losing soul-pieces, of standing on the edge of a precipice waiting for the next shoe to drop, was finally over.

For as long as he could remember, people looked at him with pity. But the truth was, Seungcheol doesn’t remember much of the early pain. All he knew was that he was always sick, and that the doctors didn’t think he would survive. It was the yearning ache that came after, that struck a deeper chord.

He grows up as normally as he can.

When he is five years old, a new family moves into the house next door. They have a son the same age as him, and Seungcheol hears through the cracks in the doors and the adults whispering overhead that Jonghyun is not that much different from himself.

He, too, was once a little boy torn into pieces during the first year of his life. But unlike Seungcheol, Jonghyun had already been born with one, clean scar and received only three more.

It didn’t matter. They were children and their world was as big as each other’s front yard and expanded little beyond the corner store and the kindergarten they both went to. On weekends, one of their parents would bring them both to the park to kick ball on the grass or play at the jungle gym. It was much bigger than the playground in their neighbourhood, with sand on the ground instead of usual rubber tiles and Jonghyun would dare him to hang upside from the monkey bars and they would both get scolded for it.

There wasn’t much energy put into the thought of soulmates. No one really did, at that age.

In summer they would be brought to the pool and Jonghyun would run a stubby finger down the scars on his spine to tickle him, and Seungcheol would do the same as they splashed and waded and laughed.

“I’m the winner!” Seungcheol would gloat, hands on his hips, “‘Cause I have eight more than you!”

He held up eight fingers to his mother, who was minding them not too far away. He learnt how to count just the other day. He was so proud of himself, so clever.

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eye. There was a tinge of pain just hiding in the corner, a sliver of worry, too. He doesn’t notice. Children seldom do.

Jonghyun sticks his tongue out at him, squirts water into his face with the water-gun, and the moment passes. Right now, they were not yet six and the world was still bright, and kind. They would continue to dig dirt and catch insects and make a mess.

His mother puts her worries away for another day.

Then the first call comes.

They had outdoor play today, which was essentially a blown-up plastic pool filled with about five centimetres of water and a tiny bit of soap suds, but the children revelled in playing in it anyway. Seungcheol had worn his regular swimming trunks; no t-shirt. The substitute teacher wondered whether his parents had been beating him.

“Surely no one has _that_ many soulmate scars?”

The kindergarten was quick to apologize for their staff’s insensitivity and incompetence, and the matter was quickly resolved with a few photos of Seungcheol’s back as a baby for proof. But the questions were already surfacing, the rumours starting to spread.

They pulled Seungcheol out of that school and taught him always to keep a t-shirt on, even if it was hot outside. He was to never go swimming without a wetsuit either.

It helped that the weather was turning cold anyway, so Seungcheol followed the instructions without much complaint.

His parents would protect him for as long as they still could.

But it didn’t matter. It was already starting.

He still played ball in the park with Jonghyun. He went to kindergarten (another one, where nobody asked why he never bathed with the rest) and his older brother tussled with him all the same. But there were small things, little adjustments, that reminded him he wasn’t exactly like the other kids.

Then Jonghyun goes to elementary school, a different one from Seungcheol and on that very first day, comes home with a mousy, wide-eyed boy holding tightly onto his hand.

The days Jonghyun comes over to play become lesser and lesser after that, until he doesn’t come at all. More boys Seungcheol doesn’t know get invited over to play with Jonghyun, but not a single one of those invites ever make their way to him.

One day, his mother finds him crying in his room.

She wipes his tears and pulls him to her chest and explains to him about soulmates. About how Jonghyun has found his, and that he would be naturally more inclined to spend his time with them as the soul in his body calls him to.

She explains, as much as she can to a seven-year-old, that when a soul calls to another part of itself, it is like magnets attracting each other, and there is little the physical self can do to deny its spirit.

Lots of the words are lost to him.

All Seungcheol knew then was that Jonghyun was no longer his friend.

He was invited to Jonghyun’s eighth birthday party simply due to the nature of proximity. It was then that Seungcheol learnt Jonghyun had found almost all his soulmates.

“One still missing,” Jonghyun’s mother says, laughter around her eyes, “But I’m happy because he’s not alone anymore.”

Seungcheol pretends he doesn’t hear, wandering out of the door without so much as a goodbye. He crosses their front yards (that once belonged to the both of them, but now has an imaginary boundary between demarcating what was Seungcheol’s and what was Jonghyun’s and his soulmates’) and stomped up to his own bedroom. If his howls echo over the gates and invades Jonghyun’s party, then, well. He was only just eight himself.

He wasn’t invited to anymore birthday parties after that but it’s alright, because he didn’t want to go to them either.

For the rest of elementary school, Seungcheol mostly kept to himself. He quickly learns that whatever superficial friendships he makes will never last, not unless they were his soulmates. Over time, people around him start to blend into each other – washed-out, watercolour faces fading in and out of his peripheral consciousness as time passes and the seasons change.

Around him, more and more people find their soulmates. There was always a rumour going around about another girl or boy, finding their fated one. For children, that came in the form of a forever friend, someone to climb trees and catch bugs with. Sleepovers and summer camps and breaking twin popsicles over the sidewalk.

Seungcheol throws himself into learning about soulmates instead.

Sometimes he would drag his mother to the adult section and ask for “big people” books on the same subject and have her read out the words when they got too difficult.

Summers for him was the quiet flipping of books, air-conditioning turned on high and going to sleep dreaming of what it would feel like to finally be someone’s favourite person.

Even when he entered middle school, he never stopped.

He eventually learns that there are many different types of soulmates.

The most common came in twos – “split-aparts” as Plato calls them.

There were also groups of three, four, five, six, seven and even twelve. The bigger the number, the harder it was to find research about it. But there would always be some sort of literature on the subject, some precedent set by a group of people Seungcheol would never know of.

It was all too academic for a twelve-year-old but he consumed the texts like they were oxygen and it would kill him if he didn’t. It became an obsession almost; every day he would scour the internet for stories about multiple soulmates, and he would reflect onto himself, about what kind of soulmates he might have.

The prevalent theory that a group of soulmates would often instinctively mimic naturally occurring phenomenon found in Mother Nature. For example, a group of four people might associate their souls with that of the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. A group of seven soulmates; the seven colours in a rainbow. In short, there would always be some sort of equilibrium to be met, some balance that put all the pieces of one soul into harmony.

Nothing however, as far as Seungcheol knew, came naturally in Thirteens. Even the Zodiacs were twelve, with one king. Seungcheol didn’t want to be king. He didn’t want to be the one left out without a pair, a ruler over his subjects.

And then suddenly three years have passed, and he’s graduated from middle school. He is almost fifteen, a boy with twelve soulmates, and he has yet to find even a single one.

He knows his parents worry. He worries too.

Is there something wrong with him? Is he… defective? Is that why he hasn’t found his soulmate yet?

Or is it something more sinister? A thought he doesn’t let his mind wander towards unless it is under the cover of unmentionable dark: _~~are his soulmates dead?~~_

His mother reassures him that it would be alright in the end, that he still has his whole life ahead of him, but he also knows she murmurs quiet worries with his father when they think he’s not watching. In those times their hands would unconsciously twist together, a symbol of support against frightful unknowns.

Seungcheol wants that. So badly.

There’s a sickly feeling in his stomach and doubt his mind. What if he truly never finds his soulmate? What if he has these twelve scars, but was destined never to heal a single one?

“Seungcheol!” his mom calls from downstairs. “You need to sleep! Your last soccer game is tomorrow!”

He turns off the lamp. He watches the ceiling but can’t seem to fall asleep.

After the game tomorrow and then a few hours later, he will be fifteen. He will be well on his way to becoming a high schooler by then.

The thrumming pain in his belly flares again. He fights it down. He will not miss tomorrow’s game. He _will_ finish middle school on a high.

He must. If not, what was the point of sticking it out so far?

Seungcheol closes his eye and forces himself to sleep.

* * *

_“Meeting your soulmate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before – you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of the drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.”_

_I’ll Give you the Sun, **Jandy Nelson**_


End file.
